Media Pet Peeve

This story arrived last week. It seems innocuous enough...

Even as states and jurisdictions made gay and lesbian marriages legal, "The Newlywed Game" has played it straight — until now.

The long-running game show, now on the GSN cable network, said Wednesday it will feature its first gay couple this season on a celebrity edition. George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek," will appear with his partner, Brad Altman.

Anyone aware that "The Newlywed Game" was even on the air somewhere, raise your hand...anyone?...no one? I thought so. The story goes on with the usual stuff -- comments from Takei, a GSN executive, current host Carnie Wilson (again, who knew?), some notes about the show's history, some hatemongering from a right-wing nut...wait, WHAT?

Dan Gainor, a vice president at the conservative Culture and Media Institute, said the move was a publicity stunt for a show most Americans didn't realize was still on the air. Despite Wilson's views, Gainor said he believed it was a political statement for the California-based show and network, coming in a state where voters banned same-sex nuptials months after Takei and Altman married.

"They're trying to use TV and the movies to set the gay agenda and make it mainstream," Gainor said.

And there we have it. There's no reason for the media to get a comment from these right-wing conservative creeps any time a story that remotely touches on a gay issue is mentioned. This isn't a story about a vote in Congress or an election. It's about a stupid TV show with an undoubtedly tiny audience.

Nearly every TV show in history has pushed and pushed a straight agenda, and no one finds the need to get a comment from gay activists for reports about those shows. No one wanted to know why Ricky Ricardo didn't have a gay brother, or whether Jed Clampett had any lesbian kinfolk back home.

This is simply more proof that the "liberal media" doesn't really exist. When push comes to shove, the mainstream media is much more conservative than anything else. We've seen it over and over. The "journalism" at the beginning of the Iraq War is just one example. This explains why the "birthers" and the "tea baggers" and the "creationists" and the other mental defectives get so much publicity. They're given respect and attention that they just don't deserve.

Quick(?) review: Make The Yuletide Gay

"Make The Yuletide Gay" is probably destined to become a yearly holiday tradition on Logo, the gay cable network. (Pause for some enterprising TLA Releasing person to edit that into "'Destined to become a holiday tradition!' - Joe Guckin, The Joe In Philly Experience!" and put it on the DVD cover, or at least in print ads. There. My naked bid for attention is complete.)

This film screened at the Philadelphia QFest (which used to be called the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which led to the unfortunate acronym of PIGLFF) but I was unable to attend the two scheduled showings. Fortunately, the film was named a Festival Favorite and was shown again on the final night of QFest.

College sweethearts Olaf "Gunn" Gunnunderson and Nathan Stanford are headed to their respective family homes for the Christmas holiday. Nathan then finds out that his parents (including Gates McFadden of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fame) won a trip to Israel and conveniently forgot to inform him until the day before his flight home. Rather than stay in an empty home, Nathan decides to make the trip to Wisconsin and surprise Gunn, only to be surprised himself: his boyfriend, out and proud on campus, isn't out to his family. Gunn's dad is a stoner and his mom is a Christmas freak, dontcha know (she talks like that); she's constantly spouting double-entendres and trying to fix her son up with Abby, a girl he dated in high school. (Abby's mom is played by Alison Arngrim -- Nellie Oleson from "Little House on the Prairie, and that fact is referenced in the movie.) It started a little slow for me, but got funnier as it went along. It plays out sort of as you'd expect, but with enough odd twists to keep it interesting. Nathan is played by Adamo Ruggiero. Adamo was Marco, a teenager who came out of the closet on "Degrassi: The Next Generation" -- what is it with the "Next Generation" trend? Now he's 23, utterly adorable (just look at that photo), out of the closet in real life also, and as of the time this profile appeared, still single. Call me, Adamo! I gave you a blurb for the DVD box, so you owe me! My grade: B-plus.